After the muddled end of my last school year, I admit I’m anxious about starting up school again. I still haven’t quite gotten a handle on my fibromyalgia. My business is growing, but it’s growing primarily in a way that involves me doing more work to make it grow, as well as the work I need to do to provide for my family. I’m not up to a full day’s worth of work, quantity wise, even though it takes me a full day (or longer) to do it. I’m not sure how I’ll strike a balance between work and school once it starts, since both are priorities. There is so much that is unknown and I feel so unprepared, that there’s definitely an anxiety factor involved.

Willy, on the other hand, seems willfully unaware that school will start in less than a month. He will acknowledge it if I bring the issue up directly. He’ll discuss what concessions he’s willing to make with regards to new clothes, new school supplies, new shoes, and a new backpack. He’s willing to talk, briefly, about how he felt last year went. He won’t talk directly about his hopes and fears about the coming year. It’s difficult to weigh his anxiety levels, because he asserts a blasé attitude that seemingly belies his willfulness on the matter.

Alex, of course, is impossible to gauge. Honestly, I think getting back to the routine of school will be good for him. We have had something of a routine this summer, which has helped; but it’s a routine that spreads across the week, not over a single day, and it’s subject to far more change than the routines of school. This is not to say that he isn’t experiencing anxiety over the start of school. It’s more to say that it’s difficult to judge that anxiety relative to the buzz of anxiety he seems to feel most of the time. There are times when he’s completely free and, by noting those times and repeating the surrounding circumstances, we’ve even been able to increase them. However, the onset of anxiety is never so easily pinned to one cause or another, because he can experience both instantaneous and delayed reactions, depending on his processing during the moment. He seems to be handling the idea of returning to school well, but it’s hard to tell.

Ben is another matter. He seems genuinely unaware of the imminence of school. If I bring it up, his behavior reflects a belief that what I’m saying is not interesting, and therefore not worth attending to. This doesn’t necessarily suggest a blasé attitude similar to Will’s, because Ben’s hyper-focus can be very difficult to break through, even if you attempt to do so with something immediate, tangible, and desired. Ben has very much been “in his own world” this summer. He’ll zone into something desired and prolong it as long as possible. The easiest way to break him out of it (not that we do this on purpose or anything) is to give Alex the opportunity to do something he likes to do that annoys Ben. Ben will stop whatever he’s doing, wherever he’s doing it (as long as they’re both in the same house) and try to make Alex stop. If Ben cares one way or the other about the start of school, then he’s not saying so. I suspect he’ll care once he has to go back to focusing on tasks and timetables that other people set for him.

Of course, Mark is the stay-at-home parent who is not going to school, so the start of school means something different to him. I remember what that was like and, if he’s anything like me, he’s looking forward to the relief. After all, he’s borne the brunt of a difficult summer. He’s definitely ready for a break! And he definitely deserves it!